RECAP: River Rafting Industry in Colorado and Parts West:  The COVID Pandemic Effects

There are 179 rafting-outfitter business in Colorado, most small (some serving as few as 50 customers per year), but some serving as many as 30,000 individuals per year.  The river-rafting year is only approximately 11 weeks long, so every week is critical.  Most of these businesses are located in small communities in rural parts of Colorado (Fort Collins is almost three times larger than Grand Junction, the second largest) so the economic impact (almost $230 million in 2021) is largely focused on small, rural communities.  There are some 19 streams in the state with white-water rafting stretches, all in the western half of the state, most flowing toward the Pacific Ocean.  Each stream has its own limitations, some physical, others regulatory, on the possible scale of the river-rafting operations.  On the Poudre, the only Wild and Scenic river in Colorado, there are only five outfitters and they are restricted on the number of individuals they can put on the river on any one day.  The National Parks and other scenic areas of the state are big draws for river rafting since many people come for the parks and include river rafting in their itinerary.  Although the focus of the participants is on the experience, the focus of the providers is on care of the families and the “elderly” participating in the experience: the income comes from people in the boat with the possible addition of T-shirt sales. 
 
Much of his presentation focused on challenges faced by the industry.  In the area of attracting customers, he focused on managing perceptions.  The perceptions generated by media coverage of natural disasters are almost always worse than the reality on the river.  Much of his effort in this area is toward getting the media coverage to include the positive side of the stories since it is difficult to recapture potential customers who have heard an unalloyed bad story.  During times of drought (e.g., 2002 and 2012), river rafting was still going on.  During and after wild fires, river rafting was still going on. Depending on the situations on a specific river, the customer experience can be enhanced by altering the length of the boat or where to put in on the river.  Times of low water can actually provide a better experience for most customers. 
 
Each year, CROA provides an Annual Commercial River Use Report to the state (available on the CROA web site).  The number of “user days” and the total economic impact are highly variable from year to year.  Both may change by 20% to as much as 50% from one year to the next.  User days typically vary between 450,000 and 550,000 per year; over the last decade, economic impact has ranged from less than $150m to more than $225m.  The Arkansas, the most heavily rafted river in the world, may change by as much as 50,000 user days from one year to the next.  During drought years, some rivers do poorly, but some do well because river flow must be maintained for electric power generation.  Last year was a banner year, presumably because of post-Covid demand and an un-met desire to get outside. However, that result was tempered by equipment limitations (resulting from social distancing) and staffing shortages.
 
Many, perhaps most, of the non-physical challenges faced by the industry are in the area of legislation versus regulation, where regulation is the bureaucratic implementation of legislation passed by Federal or State legislative bodies.  Individual river-rafting companies may be subject to regulations from up to nine different Federal and State bodies which do not necessarily coordinate with each other or consider some of the consequences of their actions on smaller businesses. For example, the U.S. Department of Transportation recently increased the amount of required commercial vehicle insurance to $5m, an amount that is impossible to obtain in Colorado without increasing the insurance on everything, an exorbitant increase for small businesses.  The Division of Private Education and Occupational Schools recently increased the requirements for general training schools (including the requirement for a curriculum vitae for each instructor) such that 2/3 of the operators would need more paperwork, thus risking having the providers change focus from the safety of the providers and the customers to providing the correct paperwork.  A recent executive order increases the minimum wage for Federal Contractors (which, by a quirk, includes river-rafting companies in Federal land): although the minimum wage for some in the industry is greater than the new Federal minimum, the order requires payment of overtime in such a way that multi-day rafting trips, where each employee might be considered to be on the job 24 hours per day, would become exorbitant.  Each of these changes is being challenged, more or less successfully, but any that are ultimately enforced will damage the industry. 
 
Questions: 
There was some interest in the impact of the new Federal minimum wage.  Although the new minimum wage would be $15.00 per hour, a six-day trip would be 144 hours, so 120 of those hours would be at overtime.  The order does not impact private individuals who would be operating on the same rivers as the river-rafting companies. 
 
Average income?  Highly variable. People with medium skill levels may earn $100s of dollars per day. 
 
There was some interest in the nature of the hires at the various river-rafting companies.  Many of the summer hires are teachers on summer “vacation”.  Many are young people who love the live style and may follow the sun, summer in the US, southern-hemisphere summer in New Zealand.  Many finally leave the industry when they get into their 30s (although some stay into their 40s and even their 50s), or when their children get around school age, or when they negotiate a change with their spouses.